Every generation sniffs at its nouveaux riches, but by the next they have become merged in the aristocracy.
It isn't a new thing in England at all. It has always been that way. Two-thirds of the peerage have their start from a wealthy merchant, or some other person who made a fortune. They are really the back-bone of England.
You should keep that always in mind."
"Of course--I see what you mean"--Winnie replied, her dark cheek flushing faintly under the tacit reproof.
She had passed her twenty-fifth birthday, but her voice had in it the docile self-repression of a school-girl. She spoke with diffident slowness, her gaze fastened upon her plate.
"Of course--my grandfather was a lawyer--and your point is that merchants--and others who make fortunes--would be the same.""Precisely," said Lady Plowden. "And do tell us, Mr. Thorpe"--she turned toward where he sat at her right and beamed at him over her spectacles, with the air of having been wearied with a conversation in which he bore no part--"is it really true that social discontent is becoming more marked in America, even, than it is with us in England?""I'm not an American, you know," he reminded her.
"I only know one or two sections of the country--and those only as a stranger. You should ask Miss Madden.""Me?" said Celia. "Oh, I haven't come up for my examinations yet. I'm like Balder--I'm preparing.""What I should like Mr. Thorpe to tell us," suggested Lady Cressage, mildly, "is about the flowers in the tropics--in Java, for example, or some of the West Indies. One hears such marvelous tales about them.""Speaking of flowers," Thorpe suddenly decided to mention the fact;"I met out in one of the greenhouses here this morning, an old acquaintance of mine, the gardener, Gafferson.
The last time I saw him, he was running the worst hotel in the world in the worst country in the world--out in British Honduras."
"But he's a wonderful gardener," said Lady Cressage.
"He's a magician; he can do what he likes with plants.
It's rather a hobby of mine--or used to be--and I never saw his equal."Thorpe told them about Gafferson, in that forlorn environment on the Belize road, and his success in making them laugh drew him on to other pictures of the droll side of life among the misfits of adventure.
The ladies visibly dallied over their tea-cups to listen to him; the charm of having them all to himself, and of holding them in interested entertainment by his discourse--these ladies of supremely refined associations and position--seemed to provide an inspiration of its own.
He could hear that his voice was automatically modulating itself to their critical ears. His language was producing itself with as much delicacy of selection as if it came out of a book--and yet preserving the savour of quaint, outlandish idiom which his listeners clearly liked.
Upon the instant when Lady Plowden's gathering of skirts, and glance across the table, warned him that they were to rise, he said deliberately to himself that this had been the most enjoyable episode of his whole life.
There were cigar boxes on the fine old oak mantel, out in the hall, and Winnie indicated them to him with the obvious suggestion that he was expected to smoke.
He looked her over as he lit his cigar--where she stood spreading her hands above the blaze of the logs, and concluded that she was much nicer upon acquaintance than he had thought. Her slight figure might not be beautiful, but beyond doubt its lines were ladylike.
The same extenuating word applied itself in his mind to her thin and swarthy, though distinguished, features.
They bore the stamp of caste, and so did the way she looked at one through her eye-glasses, from under those over-heavy black eyebrows, holding her head a little to one side.
Though it was easy enough to guess that she had a spirit of her own, her gentle, almost anxious, deference to her mother had shown that she had it under admirable control.
He had read about her in a peerage at his sister's book-shop the previous day. Unfortunately it did not give her age, but that was not so important, after all.
She was styled Honourable. She was the daughter of one Viscount and the sister of another. Her grandfather had been an Earl, and the book had shown her to possess a bewildering number of relationships among titled folks.
All this was very interesting to him--and somewhat suggestive.
Vague, shapeless hints at projects rose in his brain as he looked at her.
"I'm afraid you think my brother has odd notions of entertaining his guests," she remarked to him, over her shoulder. The other ladies had not joined them.
"Oh, I'm all right," he protested cordially. "I should hate to have him put himself out in the slightest."Upon consideration he added: "I suppose he has given up the idea of shooting to-day.""I think not, "she answered." The keeper was about this morning, that is--and he doesn't often come unless they are to go out with the guns. I suppose you are very fond of shooting.""Well--I've done some--in my time," Thorpe replied, cautiously.
It did not seem necessary to explain that he had yet to fire his first gun on English soil. "It's a good many years,"he went on, "since I had the time and opportunity to do much at it. I think the last shooting I did was alligators.
You hit 'em in the eye, you know. But what kind of a hand I shall make of it with a shot-gun, I haven't the least idea. Is the shooting round I here pretty good?""I don't think it's anything remarkable. Plowden says my brother Balder kills all the birds off every season.
Balder's by way of being a crack-shot, you know.
